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Updated: June 6, 2025
The King and young Valdemar, Dagmar's son, with a small suite of retainers had spent the day hunting on the little island of Lyö. Count Henrik of Schwerin, the Black Count they called him, who had just returned from a pilgrimage to the Holy Land, was his guest. The count hated Valdemar bitterly for some real or fancied injury, but he hid his hatred under a friendly bearing and smooth speech.
They brought the poet wine but he did not drink it sat staring at the smoky ceiling, assailed by a sudden sharp vision of Dagmar and Waram at Broadenham, alone together for the first time, perhaps on the terrace in the starlight, perhaps in Dagmar's bright room which had always been scented, warm, remote He had been reciting, of course, in French. Now he broke abruptly into English.
Waram perjured himself, too for Dagmar's sake. He had not, he swore, heard the actress speak of a silver statuette, or of revenge before God.... And since there was nothing to prove how the blow had been struck, save the deep dent in Tucker's forehead, Grimshaw was set free. He had been a year in prison.
"But all men said that this great hurt befell the King because that he brake the oath he swore upon the sacred body of the Lord." The wars of Valdemar were over, but his sorrows were not. Four years later the crushing blow fell when Dagmar's son, who was crowned king to succeed him, lost his life while hunting. With him, says the folk-song, died the hope of Denmark.
"It is impossible, your highness, for me to say whether or not it is Frederic," said the duke frankly. "He is what I imagine the pretender might be at his age, but it would be sheer folly for me to speculate. I do not know the man." Beverly squeezed the Countess Dagmar's arm convulsively. "Hurrah!" she whispered, in great relief. Dagmar looked at her in astonishment.
"I'm here," replied Dagmar, "bag and baggage, mostly bag," kicking the accommodating and inoffensive telescope. "I hate to carry this thing." "Oh, that's all right," replied the taller girl, who, under a street lamp, showed a face older than Dagmar's and perhaps a little hard and rough.
But the Black Count's conscience was as swarthy as his countenance; and besides, had he not just been to the Holy Land, and thereby washed himself clean of all his sins, past and present? Behind prison walls, comforted only by Dagmar's son, sat the King, growing old and gray with anger and grief. Denmark lay prostrate under the sudden blow, while her enemies rose on every side.
Brodix, Dagmar's mother, good, kind mother that she was, spent her time wringing her hands and rolling her big black eyes, otherwise in extolling the hitherto undiscovered virtues of the lost daughter. In her distress she forsook the English tongue, and lapsed into a conglomeration of Polish and Yiddish made intelligible only through the plentiful interpretation of dramatic gesticulation.
The first request he granted; but the other he refused for cause: An' he comes out, Bishop Valdemar, Widow he makes you this year. And he did his worst; for in the end the King yielded to Dagmar's prayers, and much mischief came of it. Seven years the good queen lived. Seven centuries have not dimmed the memory of them, or of her.
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